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Stimulation to Reading 
for High School Students 


PBA 


JESSIE M. TOWNE 
Department of English, Omaha High School 


Read before the Nebraska Library Association at the Nineteenth Annual 
Meeting, held in Omaha, Nebraska, October 15-17, 1913 


Printed for the Omaha Public Library by the courtesy of Mr. C. N. Dietz 
President of the Omaha Public Library Board 





3 My 15-0. 


Stimulation to Reading for High 
School Students 


In this discussion I have, of course, to talk from the point 
of view of the English teacher, since that is my only experience. 
Some things that we have tried to do, librarians could do just as 
well; some devices perhaps seem better fitted to the relation of — 
teacher and class. But the librarian and the teacher ought to 
work together; no two public agencies should be more closely 
knit in purpose. We rely on our own public library as an abound- 
ing source of supply, as a constant reference, yet we are always 
aware that we do not use it as much as we might. This is partly 
because of the size of our school—it is difficult to refer three © 
hundred pupils at a time to one library for one purpose, but some 
day we surely shall work it out. There must be a way. 


It is probably because I deal with that age of young people, 
but 1t seems to me that boys and girls from fourteen to eighteen 
are in the “critical period” for the cultivation of reading habits. » 
They are still impressionable, at least we think that they are; 
their habits are not fully formed; they are still in our hands, and 
many of them will not be connected with educational influences 
in any vital way after their High School course; we still have 
something of a: personal connection with them, far less than we 
wish, but more than those students who leave school will ever 
have again; more than some get in our great universities. So it 
seems as if we ought to do something, and as if it were our last 
chance. 

That there is a great deal to do needs not to be said. Some- 
times the present conditions seem very dreadful. Every year in 
our institution we find some pupils who have never read through 
a book outside of required work in school. I have in mind one 


boy who took an English course, in which four weeks were given 


to the reading of “Ivanhoe,” who found it impossible to read the 
book and failed in the course. The second time that he took the 
work he passed without having read the book because he learned 
enough from class,recitation to make 70 on the examination. 


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That sort of pupil forms a small proportion, of course, but there 
are more than we think. 


The large number of pupils read enough, but read very poor 
stuff—The Post, The Blue Book, McGrath, David Graham 
Phillips, and their ilk bound the literary horizon for many of 
them. They have in consequence very bad habits of reading; they 
read hurriedly and carelessly, with ability to get only the most 
obvious points in a story; they require of an author no skill in 
construction, no truth to life, no greatness or nobility of concep- 
tion; and never do they remember what they read. 

In addition to this prevalent custom of reading poor books, 
there are many difficulties in the way of stimulating to read good. 
literature, difficulties especially of these latter days, and for the 
High School age. The lives of our pupils are filled with things 
that distract. Many have to work; they possibly are more for- 
tunate, for that obligation may shut them away from useless or 
harmful things. Many, in the vigor of their youth, turn to diver- 
sions which give them physical activity. They do not feel them- 
selves yet old or feeble enough for the book and the chimney 
corner ; for them we have no difficulty in finding an excuse. But 
for too many the moving picture shows, vaudeville, cheap stock 
companies, automobiles, club dances, all the devices for offering 
distraction with a minimum of intellectual effort, make the read- 
ing of a good book seem a wearisome task. When little children 
they are protected from these distractions, but from the High 
School years on they meet them all and are both literally and 
metaphorically “whirled about.” 


I think, too, that the present condition of material luxury 
affects many young people. They enjoy good things and they 
are surrounded with them. Satisfied in every physical sense, 
they are not forced to seek pleasure in the world of the imagina- 
tion or of great thought. They are helped into an easy accept- 
ance of a materialistic attitude that distresses the thoughtful 
observer. Since they are enjoying life to the full, why should 
they seek for higher means of enjoyment? Only the dissatisfied 
long for the “life that is more than meat.” Many of our students 
also have no books at home, no traditions of reading, no scholarli- 
ness behind them. We must never forget that here and now in 
America we are trying an experiment in education which has 
never been tried in the world before, for we are attempting to 
give all classes of people an opportunity to get the same sort of 
education. So in our public schools we expect from the son and 


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daughter of the plowman or the ditch-digger the same scholarly | 
habit as from the child of the clergyman or the lawyer. Some- 
times he shows it, but sometimes his inheritance makes intel- 
lectual pursuits difficult. 


In urging reading upon our young people, some purposes 
apply, not exclusively perhaps, but especially, to them. First, it 
is an age for forming habits, and the habit of reading, like other 
habits, must be cultivated. They smile when we who have tested 
it tell them the solace and stimulus that grown people find in it, 
but grown people do not turn to books readily without previous 
acquaintance. This is the time to make that acquaintance. In 
trying to reach this need, we have begun in our schools to pay 
considerable attention to the intensive study of. literary classics. 
This process, while it accomplishes some things, does not seem 
to do all that we hoped. 


It is a truism that reading stimulates the imagination, but 
to the teacher this truism is ominous. Young people are supposed 
to have imaginative power, but many of our present young people 
do not have it to command. They do not appear able in reading 
a story to see a single picture. Brian’s scarlet mantle in “Ivan- 
hoe,’ Rowena’s jewelled braids, Gurth’s collar of serfdom, make 
no impression on their sensibilities. Are their carelessly written 
books responsible? Or is it that the poor intellectual inheritance 
of some, and the material satisfaction in the lives of others, have 
prevented growth in this direction? 


Another quality that they need to cultivate is sympathy. 
They have plenty of it for people of their own kind, under cir- 
cumstances which they have experienced; but in a story which 
deals with another time than our own, with other conditions of 
race, religion, or human emotion, something not now in fashion, 
like the religious intolerance of Beaumanoir in “Ivanhoe,” the 
superstition of the village folk in “Silas Marner,” the supernatural 
element in ‘“The Ancient Mariner,’ these characteristics have to 
be very carefully handled to gain any tolerance from the youthful 
reader. So the vicarious experience of stories, both of fiction 
and of actual fact, ought to bring him something that Americans 
especially need. For in this “melting pot” of the nations we 
shall have to understand and to help many kinds of men. 


Closely connected with this is what we feel is the most 1m- 
portant purpose for them—the gaining of spiritual values. It is 
a great thing for them to look at life through the eyes of one 


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who sees clearly the laws of character, of sin and punishment, of 
suffering and growth. They enjoy it. Many of them are still at 
the age when the moral point of view is most attractive, and when 
they watch for it in an author. It is the more essential, therefore, 
that they should read books that give it to them with truth, avoid- 
ing alike such pitfalls as the sentimentality or the materialism of 
some recent popular fiction. 


For the child who has never read at all, one’s first aim is, 
of course, to get him to read anything. The first book must be 
easy, not too youthful, for his lack of reading does not argue 
immaturity ; it must not be too long, or too different from every- 
day life-—R. H. Davis’ short stories, Stevenson’s ‘‘Treasure 
Island,’ or if he is impatient of fiction, Parkman’s “Oregon 
Trail,’ may turn the trick. Sometimes the first book proves the 
only necessary spur, sometimes we seem to accomplish nothing. 
I very rarely find a girl-who has not read at all, but often they 
read so slowly that one of Dickens’ long stories, or even “Lorna 
Doone,” proves an impossible task. 

The other and more numerous class of pupils, those who 
have done some reading, I find almost always eager for lists of 
books to read, a condition which would seem to argue that one 
reason they do not read good books is that they do not know 
which they are. Unfortunately we cannot tell how much or how 
long they use these lists. Almost every term I have one or two 
pupils who read six or more books in the four months; some- 
times I have none. Conditions vary so that it is impossible to 
make any general statement. Sometimes we require the reading 
of a book or two outside of class. ‘This measure, I know, does 
not meet with favor in the eyes of many people, but there are 
reasons for it. There is a convention among children that they 
do not like anything that the teachers or schools uphold. That 
convention prevents their attempting things that we know they - 
would like if they once tested them. Their continual distractions 
prevent it, and they are really ignorant of the books to which 
they might turn. 


Miss Taylor recently asked a boy to read Booker Washing- 
ton’s “Up from Slavery.” He objected a little, not seeing any 
reason for his being interested in that book. But after he had 
' had the book a little while he brought to her a news clipping of 
Booker Washington’s report of Tuskegee, very much pleased that 
his eyes had been opened to a new phase of life. She had a 
somewhat similar experience with Mary Antin’s “The Promised 

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Land.” In this case she is not requiring a complete reading of 
the book, only some acquaintance with it. Sometimes we give 
extra credit for books read outside of class, if a short informal 
report is handed in, or an oral report is made merely to show 
that the book has been read. This proves the best bait, and occa- 
sionally a child appears who forgets the bait in the joy of the 
reading. The lists may be many and varied, but each should not 
be very long—perhaps of fifteen or twenty titles of a kind. I 
have never attained it, but some of us have thought that a list 
typewritten on the size paper that would fit into the pupil’s note- 
book would be most useful, being always at hand—in our school 
the student’s notebook is his inseparable companion. 


In making these lists we try to keep in mind several different 
purposes ; to point the way for those who do not know it, to good 
reading ; to try to prepare for the future, by showing them books 
fit for maturity; to distinguish somewhat the quality of books, 
so that they may have a basis for judgment; to try to consider 
the different individualities of the pupils. Our lists have been 
mainly fiction. 


I always start, accordingly, with the classics. I name two 
or three of Scott’s—we read “Ivanhoe” in school—I add “The 
Talisman,” “Kenilworth,” “Rob Roy ;’ two or three of Dickens’: 
_ “David Copperfield,” “Oliver Twist,” “A Tale of Two Cities ;” 
we read “Silas Marner” in school, I add “The Mill on the Floss”’ 
and “Adam Bede;” Blackmore’s “Lorna Doone;’ Kingsley’s 
“Westward Ho,” and “Hereward the Wake.” I do not usually 
give Thackeray or Jane Austen to High School pupils; but I do 
give “Jane Eyre,” especially to the girls. For the boys, “The 
Three Guardsmen” and ‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ Steven- 
son’s adventure yarns, and Jules Verne. Occasionally a boy who 
reads quickly reads “Les Misérables” and is proud of his achieve- 
ment. A list of short stories always is welcomed: Richard Hard- 
ing Davis’ earlier ones, ““Gallegher” and the “Van Bibber”’ stories, 
T. B. Aldrich, Mary E. Wilkins, Sarah Orne Jewett, F. Hopkin- 
son Smith, E. FE. Hale. Hawthorne is often too subtle; Poe | 
give with a caution, for sometimes the girls feel his stories too 
horrible; of Kipling, too, | name only “The Day’s Work,” “Kim,” 
“The Jungle Books’ (often they have not read them), “The 
Naulahka,” and “Puck of Pook’s Hill,’ which last [ have never 
succeeded in getting read. I have made partial lists of historical 
novels such as Scott, of course, Bulwer-Lytton, Kingsley, and 
some which the passing of time has made historical. I have never 


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had much success with these lists, but I have always wished to 
do more. Ought not a course which would follow the history of 
England, for example, through the centuries, to be very attrac- 
tive, and though the history teachers of to-day would scorn it, 
would not the historical imagination and sympathy thus stimulated 
form a good basis for more scholarly work later? Once when [| 
was trying to make a class understand the horrors of the Black 
Plague, in the midst of a lack of comprehension that seemed 
stupid, I caught from one pupil a gleam of real understanding. 
I asked him about it and received the reply that he had read 
Henty! I do not feel like recommending Henty, but that boy 
had something that no other pupil had. | 


In connection with ‘Ivanhoe,’ a short list of books of 
approximately the same period will sometimes start them. “The 
Talisman,” “Men of Iron,” “Hereward,” “Via Crucis,” and “The — 
White Company” make a typical group. Detective stories are~- 
not perhaps the highest form of literature, but they are after all - 
legitimate amusement; so “The Moonstone” and “The Woman 
in White” are suggested as a good basis. “Sherlock Holmes” 
needs no introduction, but I have occasionally spoken of Leroux, 
Gaboriau and Anna Katharine Green.’ Sometimes travels or 
biography will catch the boy who has,his eye on the facts of life; 
and for him there is Parkman, or Nansen, or Stanley, or Mary 
Antin. . 


Our constructive English course makes a good foundation 
on which we are trying to build. In the first year we work on 
description ; in the second, narration; in the third, exposition and 
argument. Miss Taylor, the head of this department, has re- 
cently prepared a list of supplementary reading: for the first 
year, of nature books—Thoreau, Burroughs, John Muir, Bradford 
Torrey; for the third, of essays—some classic like Emerson, 
Lowell, Lamb; some more modern, like Stevenson, Crothers, 
Burroughs. Her main purpose is to introduce them to a delight- 
ful world of which they are totally ignorant. In a year or two 
I could perhaps tell you how much seemed to be accomplished. 
Our new text-book in the ninth grade, Ashmun’s “Prose Litera- 
ture,’ published by Houghton, Mifflin, is very helpful for this kind 
of effort. It contains selections of different sorts, a nature story, 
a bit of detective yarn, a humorous story, letters, descriptions, 
with lists after each selection of books of the same kind. 

The course in narration offers the best possible opportunity 
for an introduction to fiction. We read “Ivanhoe,” rather rapidly, 


8 


for the historical sense, the movement, and the broad characteri- 
zation. We study “Silas Marner” for the plot structure, the truth 
to life, the careful sympathetic characterization, the lessons 
George Eliot enforces. The teacher is supposed to read some 
short stories aloud in class; and outside reading of Dickens, if 
they have not read him, and of two short stories from the four 
or five best magazines is to be required. In connection with this 
the technique of story writing is studied; the methods of por- 
trayal of mood and character, the giving of the setting, the 
securing of suspense, the structure of a plot; and the pupils prove 
their understanding of these principles by working out simple 
problems for themselves. All this is not to make them writers 
but to endeavor to train them into the appreciation of the art of 
a story. I cannot tell how good critics they grow to be, but I am 
sure that the reading of a story aloud is the best method to 
incite them to read. Invariably some one asks for author and 
‘title, or for other books. They enjoy M. E. Wilkins most of all, 
I think, and R. H. Davis and Aldrich are close seconds. They 
do not care so much for the foreign stories as is shown by de 
Maupassant and Francois Coppée, which I have read them. I 
twice tried “The Need” by Zona Gale from The Atlantic of last 
_ June and they loved it. 


One thing which has been done successfully in our school is 
the keeping of a small book-case of books in the teacher’s room. 
One teacher of English has supplied such a case of about seventy- 
five volumes at her own expense for several years and it is con- 
stantly used. I have done it with a few volumes at various times. 
I know that if I had a case of about fifty volumes I could keep 
them busy. I have often meditated buying them; but it is too 
expensive for me or for almost any teacher. The Boards of 
Education fit up elaborate laboratories for the teaching of science, 
but they leave the teacher of English literature bare of equipment. 
There would be more expense than would at first sight seem 
justifiable, for the books would get very hard wear, and they 
would be hard to keep track of—for the pupils forget, and they 
move away without notice, and the teacher would have to do the 
distributing in the four minutes between classes, and before and 
after school when she is supposed to be busy about other things ; 
but I would gladly give the thought and attention if some one 
would furnish the books, and I know other teachers who wou!d 
do the same thing. Our great school on the hill has no general 
library and we often feel disgraced by the fact. 


9 


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In South Omaha considerable reading was accomplished with — 
ten copies each of about twenty of the standard works of fiction. 
One consideration in dealing with the child is to catch him when 
his interest is aroused.. He wishes to read when you talk about 
it. Give him the book then, and you will accomplish something. 
Reading only a part of a story or essay will always produce 
results, of course. And a hint about a story, an attempt to arouse 
curiosity in the manner of the modern advertisement, seems 
rather childish, but we do it. 


One teacher of exposition has read bits of essays from 
library copies, and left them on her desk with permission for 
any one who chose to borrow the book from her to read more. 
She has had very gratifying results in the interest shown. 


In this whole matter, however, the great difficulty is that as 
in all education, the most effective work is that done with the 
individual. A little conversation with the boy or, girl alone often 
accomplishes more than hours of talk to the whole class, or miles 
of lists. It is personal work, after all—meeting the needs of one, 
whose circumstances are different from every one else’s, giving 
him a book that is suitable for him, keeping after him until he 
reads it, discussing it with him, and trying to adjust the second 
book better to his needs, trying to show him that there is some- 
thing for him to gain by it. We can do this occasionally with 
one, but where is the time or strength for teacher or librarian to 
do it as we should like? If here again we might be treated as a 
science teacher is, and have laboratory periods in which we 
might meet pupils and discuss their reading with them, it would 
help. 


In one other place we try to point the way. In our last term 
we give a rapid survey of the history of English literature with 
Newcomer’s “Twelve Centuries,” a very discriminating selection, 
as a basis for reading. To many pupils it is a weariness to the 
flesh, for they have so little background that the learning of 
names and facts seems an almost impossible task; but now and 
then we find a pupil who suddenly begins to read; who reads our 
collection through and goes on to others and finds in the glorious 
pageant of English prose and poetry an inspiration for future 
hours. 


And what are the results? Who can tell? Our students go 
away—we never see them again—we do not know of many of 
them, whether they ever read anything worth while or not. There 


10 


are no statistics, like those of birth and death, to tell us. We can- 
not even approximate a guess. Perhaps the librarians could tell 
us something, but I am not sure that they would encourage us. 
Once in a while an old pupil comes back with a request for a 
reading list of books; once in a while one testifies to the value 
of reading, or the inspiration given him to make the effort. But 
from the vast majority, of course, we never hear. Did you 
happen to read a sketch in The Atlantic a year or so ago by 
Margaret Lynn? She pictured ideal conditions. If I could say 
what should be done for young people to get them to read | 
should put them in a house like the one in which she grew up— 
set in the middle of a Kansas prairie, where, as she says, there 
was time to read, with a library collected by a family of three or 
four generations of booklovers, so that she would have in addi- 
tion to the books the inherited desire. Then, perhaps, one could 
accomplish something and be sure of it. 


But failing this, for these circumstances are as rare as 
Margaret Lynn’s, 1f we could have time, if we could have books, 
we could, I am sure, get a few interested who have never read, 
tell some where to go who are ignorant, help some to get some 
standards which will make them intolerant of the poor stuff 
which now is their only literary food—and you and we are the 
people to do it together. 














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